6 mai 2022 | International, Aérospatial
Boeing expected to move headquarters from Chicago to DC area
Boeing plans to move its corporate headquarters from Chicago to the Washington, D.C., area.
28 août 2018 | International, C4ISR
What commanders will need in multidomain operations
By: Mark Pomerleau
Mission command systems exist for the physical world, providing commanders a picture of the ground and air environment. However, the Army, as well as the joint force, is shifting to so-called multidomain operations, which opens up a need for new tools to fully understand the operating environment.
"What we lack right now is a comprehensive understanding of cyberspace,” Col. Steve Rehn, the cyber capabilities manager at the Army Cyber Center of Excellence, said Aug. 23 at TechNet Augusta.
In multidomain battle, the commander cannot make a decision unless he understands the entirety battlespace, Rehn said, which makes it imperative that someone develop systems for understanding cyberspace (broadly defined as cyber, the electromagnetic spectrum, space and even the social media environment).
Rehn said the Army is in the process of prototyping what will eventually become a program in 2020 called cyber situational understanding, or cyber SU. This tool will help commanders visualize and understand what is happening in the nonphysical battlespace under their command, which could have drastic impacts during operations.
For example, Rehn said, speaking a day prior during the same conference, there's at least seven different networks within an average brigade combat team aside from the primary command or communications network.
The communications personnel within the brigade generally have a good handle on the primary one, but not all the others. This presents openings for the adversary if they can exploit one portion of this network and move laterally to the most important ones, gleaning sensitive information or shutting it down.
One component of cyber SU is to pull this data on all the networks together to provide the commander a more complete picture of his battlespace, which now includes the broad realm of cyber.
Not only that, Rehn said, but the general vision for a cyber SU capability, on a conceptual level, is to be able to pull information from all types of sensors in the battlespace that might provide greater intelligence about adversary action.
He provided another example in which a link goes down on the battlefield. While the normal course of action when a link goes down is to troubleshoot, if personnel were able to detect and correlate at the time the link went down that there was radio frequency interference in the same location, that would likely change the reaction and how the staff would approach a down link.
With a situational awareness tool, staff can tell the commander what the impact to the mission might be, as well as provide additional intelligence that it is typical in the doctrinal template, such as inferring from the adversary they're facing that a denial-of-service attack means the enemy is about to launch an attack and where the attack might take place.
However, Rehn noted earlier, such understanding of adversary tactics has not been realized yet. He said he'd like to get to a place where, if the adversary is targeting certain friendly systems, friendly forces might be able to discern if that is an indicator of a particular action they might take in the physical space. The Army hasn't linked observed activity within cyberspace yet to understand what that might mean in the physical space, he said.
Overall, he noted, cyber situational understanding can tip off the commander to certain indicators in which there were no physical effects or indicators.
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10 décembre 2019 | International, Naval
BREAKING: Marine Corps Planning Major Program Cuts
By Jon Harper SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — The Marine Corps intends to divest itself of legacy systems as it transforms into a more mobile and expeditionary force, the service's commandant said Dec. 7. In recent decades Marines have been busy fighting land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But now they must prepare for a potential conflict in a naval environment against advanced adversaries such as China, Gen. David Berger told reporters at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California. “We cannot wait any longer before we start adjusting our service to what we've got to be six, seven, eight years out,” he said. “We have lots of changes we have to make and ... we have to get rid of legacy things in the Marine Corps. We've got to go on a diet. We've got to get back on ship. We've got to become expeditionary again.” What types of legacy systems will be on the chopping block? “Big, heavy things,” Berger said. “Expensive things that we can't either afford to buy or afford to maintain over the life of it. Things that don't fit aboard ships. Things that can't fire hyper velocity projectiles. Things that don't have the range that we're going to need or the precision.” Mobility will be critical in future fights, he noted. Marines must be able to operate from ships or ashore, and move back and forth between domains. Other platforms that could see cuts include manned logistics vehicles and aircraft. “All those things we're going to trim down,” Berger said. The service is also looking to add new capabilities. The commandant did not identify specific systems that the Marines plan to buy, but he provided a flavor of the types of platforms that will be on the shopping list. “Think unmanned. Think expeditionary. Think very light. Think things that we can sustain forward without a huge logistical train,” Berger said. Unmanned logistics vehicles and aircraft are examples of new technologies that the service is interested in. Human beings will still be on the battlefield, Berger noted. “I just don't need them driving a truck delivering chow” if a self-driving platform could perform the task, he said. Drones could also deliver supplies. “Amazon does it. Why wouldn't we do it?” he asked. Unmanned combat aircraft are also on the wish list, he noted. The Marine Corps has been conducting wargames and simulations to help determine how the force should be redesigned for potential future combat scenarios that might occur 10 years out. “We're in the last stages of that,” Berger said. That effort will likely wrap up in late January or early February. Force composition changes will be made over 10 years, but some will begin next year, he said. Officials are examining “every part of our air-ground team,” Berger said. A wide range of capabilities are being looked at. “From individual equipment to crew served [weapons] to F-35s and everything in between.” The analysis will help determine which programs will be killed, trimmed or added, he said. The service needs new weapon systems that can find and kill enemy ships at range from ship or shore. “We have to become a naval force that's lethal in terms of putting at risk another naval force,” Berger said. In the future, large numbers of unmanned air and ground systems could function as motherships that launch other robotic vehicles and drones to conduct missions, he said. A major funding realignment is planned over the next five years. “You'll see a little bit of it” in the fiscal year 2021 budget blueprint, Berger said. “The big muscle movement — that will come in ‘22, ‘23, ‘24 in a big way.” https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/12/9/marine-corps-planning-major-program-cuts
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19 septembre 2018 | International, C4ISR
DIA announces winners in massive intelligence technology contract
By: Brandon Knapp The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) awarded spots on a contract worth up to $500 million to eight defense companies and one research organization as part of the agency's effort to buy research, development, technical, and engineering services for intelligence missions, according to an announcement from the Department of Defense Sept. 14. DIA selected AT&T, Booz Allen Hamilton, Harris Corp., KeyW Corp., Leidos Inc., Lockheed Martin Corp., Macaulay-Brown Inc., Northrop Grumman Corp., and Southwest Research Institute for the procurement program, known as HELIOS. The companies won five year contracts that include five additional one-year options. The award winners will have multiple opportunities to compete for task orders on the indefinite delivery / indefinite quantity contract in support of DIA Directorate for Science & Technology missions. Unclassified documents released in 2017 describe in part the scope of HELIOS as offering support services for “sensor technology focus areas including Measurement and Signature Intelligence” as well as “cross-cutting technology areas such as unattended remote sensing, robotics...and data processing, exploitation and dissemination.” Mission areas for HELIOS include space situational awareness, foreign counter space threats, the Internet of Things, data exfiltration, and rapid prototyping. The Virginia Contracting Activity received nine responses to their original open solicitation posted in Dec. 2016. All nine solicitors received a contract with a minimum award of $10,000. The HELIOS program has an estimated completion date of September 2028. https://www.c4isrnet.com/intel-geoint/2018/09/18/dia-announces-winners-in-massive-intelligence-technology-contract